Travel

By Zain Haidar

April 03 2015 12:00 AM EDT

weather.com

Two-thousand six hundred and sixty selfies, and one memorable storm that nearly got the best of him.

You might have that many selfies after years using an iPhone, or weeks being a narcissist, but creative director Andy Davidhazy's reason for having thousands of pictures of his face is more meaningful.

For the designer and filmmaker, the trip's most daunting aspect, both physically and mentally, was dealing with the weather.

“I was committed to snubbing my nose at the weather," Davidhazy said in an interview with weather.com.

Two hundred and fifty miles from the end of the line, weather snubbed the designer-turned-selfie-innovator. Past Washington State's Snoqualmie Pass, intense snowstorms in early October made it impossible for Davidhazy to continue and he was forced to disembark off the trail and finish the trip on conventional roadways leading to Canada.

Hikers routinely go missing near Snoqualmie Pass due to snowstorms. Just last October, a rescue helicopter found a woman who had been lost in the wilderness for three days surviving off mushrooms, KOMO News reports.

A self-described control freak, Davidhazy said that dealing with the fact that severe weather could strike at any moment was difficult. At the beginning of the journey, the main issue was dealing with the brutal heat of the desert during the day and its equally brutal cold nights.

To prepare for his trip, Davidhazy jumped right in and gave himself three weeks.

“Most people plan for months, if not years, to do it," Davidhazy said.

That meant talking to hikers who'd completed the trail and some logistical finesse. Supply-wise, Davidhazy traveled as light as possible for the months-long journey.

Luckily, Davidhazy made it to the Canadian border, some five and a half months after first stepping out of his comfort zone and starting his transformative project.

"Mile 2425. As the snow storms approach I'm growing concerned about what lies ahead. I turned around just after Snoqualmie Pass, WA." (Andy Davidhazy)

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.